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Fairway sinkhole swallows golfer

Associated Press

Posted:
03/13/2013 12:53:44 AM EDT

WATERLOO, Ill. - It sure wasn't the hole-in-one Mark Mihal had in mind.

While golfing with friends at the Annbriar Golf Course near here Friday, Mihal, 43, a mortgage broker from Creve Coeur, Mo., abruptly dropped into the ground on the fairway of the 14th hole. It was the first time a person - and not a ball - has disappeared beneath the turf in the course's 20-year history.

It also was the first time in the memory of folks who study sinkholes in Illinois that a person has fallen into one.

"I was standing in the middle of the fairway," Mihal said Monday. "Then, all of a sudden, before I knew it, I was underground."

Mihal said he fell into the mud floor of an enclosure shaped like a bell, up to 18 feet deep and 10 feet wide. The rescue was precarious, he said, because no one knew whether the surface hole would grow or the enclosure would collapse.

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